


let us now start fresh without remembrance

by green_tea31



Series: MacGyver Season 3 Tags [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Bad Parenting, Episode Tag, Gen, James MacGyver's A+ parenting, Mostly Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 16:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16329506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_tea31/pseuds/green_tea31
Summary: Short tag to 3x02. Mac muses on usefulness. Jack is absent but important.





	let us now start fresh without remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago I used to write fanfiction. Then came university and life and I lost my inspiration. Apparently it's back now, thanks to Mac and Jack. This little thing came about because I had some questions after that wonderful episode 3x02, especially regarding Mac's reaction to Jack's team and then I remembered some remarks Mac made during the season two finale and thoroughly depressed myself. Also, I would like to set James MacGyver on fire. He's such a fantastic character to dislike, isn't he?
> 
> Tagged pre-slash because I might add to this in the future and it will then probably become Mac/Jack at some point. These boys have taken over my life.  
> Be aware that, although I study it at university, English is actually my second language. Self-betaed, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Title taken from one of my favourite novels, "The Once and Future King", because sometimes I'm pretentious like that.

Mac is useful to people.

He is used to having to prove that he’s useful or people (James) don’t stay. One of his earliest childhood memories is a game he played with his Dad, where Mac had to solve increasingly difficult puzzles. Each time he’d find one left for him in his Dad’s study and after he’d solved it, Mac and his Dad would discuss how Mac had done it and what he could have done better. These discussions had been rare gifts, precious hours where Mac had had, for once, the undivided attention of his father. The few times Mac hadn’t been able to come up with a solution, James had met with a silent disappointment that taught Mac that attention had to be earned. If you wanted acknowledgement, you had to be _useful_.

Mac is useful to the Phoenix Foundation. He knows, on an intellectual level, that Matty doesn’t just keep him around because she likes him, that he’s her best operative and that she accepts his unusual methods, because she knows that Mac’s success in the field is more than just luck. Mac accepts that that is the deal. You are supposed to be useful to your employer after all.

Even his relationship with Jack had started out that way. Jack probably would have liked to shoot him more than once during their first sixty-four days together, but Mac, as an EOD, had been incredibly useful to Jack, to their fellow soldiers, and to the U.S. Army as a whole. By the time Jack decided to stick around, Mac had more than proved his usefulness. Getting to keep Jack then, for whatever additional time fate and the Army allotted him, had been another instance that proved to Mac that he would be rewarded if he was useful. He realizes that it’s probably a fucked-up way of thinking, but it’s a way of thinking that he’s been taught since childhood and things like that are hard to shake.

It’s why he’s having such a hard time sleeping now after coming back with Jack and Jack’s former team from their little jaunt through Honduras. Mac doesn’t know if he’s ever been that important to anyone, to come back for him, after ten years of almost no contact. He knows for a fact that he wasn’t important enough to his Dad. If Mac hadn’t tried to resign, he’s pretty sure he still wouldn’t know Oversight’s real identity. Somewhere between his childhood and meeting Jack in Afghanistan he’d forgotten that things like love, friendship, and loyalty _could_ be unconditional. But because he’d been taught early that usefulness precedes attention, Mac has never been able to separate the two in his mind.

When he’d left the Phoenix, after discovering that James had lied to him for most of his life, he’d needed time. Time to process, time to accept, and time to move on. Not answering Jack’s message had been shitty, but Mac had been too terrified to talk to Jack because he’d realized that, for the first time, he wasn’t sure if he could give Jack what he wanted, if he could go back to being the partner that Jack wanted and, with how tangled up love and usefulness were in his head, Mac hadn’t been sure if he’d still be _accepted_ if he came back but didn’t re-join the Phoenix. Would Jack let him stick around if he finished his degree and became an engineer instead of going back to being a spy? Mac had been so afraid of the answer, it had been easier not to talk to Jack at all.

After Honduras, sitting with Jack and his team, Mac had felt accepted in a way he’d never quite experienced before. Sure, he’d proved to be useful in Honduras, but that didn’t mean he could stick around for longer that it’d take them to get home to their families. Being told he was now one of them, if he wanted it, had been…eye opening. _Exhilarating_. As strange as it was, the unauthorized mission to Honduras had done more to repair Mac and Jack’s partnership than the entire slightly convoluted plan Jack had thought up to get Mac to come back in the first place. They might still have to work out some things, but, for the first time since leaving, Mac feels like they _will._

In the end, Jack is more important than Mac’s Dad. Mac is still not sure he will ever be able to trust his father or his father’s affection, isn’t even sure if his father’s affection can be unconditional, but for the first time Mac feels like Jack’s _is._ Mac doesn’t know where exactly his place is after they catch Murdoc, whether he’s staying at the Phoenix or not, but he’s beginning to feel like that doesn’t really matter.

He gets to keep Jack either way.   

 

       


End file.
